Why Chiefs should feel uneasy after win vs. Bengals and how it affects Patrick Mahomes

Kansas City Chiefs’ Quarterback Patrick Mahomes on winning in the final seconds against the Bengals Sunday in Arrowhead.

There is a swarm of media around one particular station in the Chiefs’ locker room and a 310-pound man with a grin on his face in the middle of it, because 310-pound men don’t typically do what Wanya Morris did Sunday.

Morris, a reserve left tackle, reached the end zone this season before Travis Kelce. He’ll always have that.

A few feet to the right of the scrum comprising dozens, Kingsley Suamataia, the Chiefs’ starting left tackle, is gathering his belongings before an audience of zero.

The man with the crowd is Sunday’s story.

The man all by his lonesome is the story that will dictate the Chiefs’ next five months.

The Chiefs beat the Bengals 26-25 on Harrison Butker’s walk-off 51-yard field goal with some swag. It’s a game they could have lost and probably should have lost — stop me if you’ve seen that before — and that they still managed a win against a rival is a pretty good bonus.

The Chiefs turned the ball over three times. They were held under 300 yards of offense. It’s the kind of day, as Patrick Mahomes would say, “in years past, if I played like I played offensively, we would have lost this game.”

Yet, here they sit, 2-0 with wins against the two teams they’ve met in the previous two AFC Championship Games, despite getting only 39 yards from the star tight end in two weeks. So there’s that. A lot to like.

But then is this part we can’t ignore — the part that, admittedly, measures the Chiefs on a insanely high Super Bowl barometer as frequently as their real-time accomplishments. The part that you can assume is atop the Chiefs’ thoughts after sifting through the debris of that frantic fourth quarter:

What about the left tackle?

Health aside, there is no development more important to this Chiefs season than that of a starting rookie left tackle, and Bengals edge rusher Trey Hendrickson derailed that development off its tracks Sunday.

At one point, it was head coach Andy Reid who put the brakes on the train himself.

It can be easy to fall into survive-and-advance mode in the NFL — the Chiefs, as much as anyone, proved the validity of that a year ago. But a team that plans to play in February has a complication in early September.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is sacked by Bengals defensive end Trey Hendrickson, who repeatedly got around and through the blocking of rookie left tackle Kingsley Suamataia (right) on Sunday afternoon at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is sacked by Bengals defensive end Trey Hendrickson, who repeatedly got around and through the blocking of rookie left tackle Kingsley Suamataia (right) on Sunday afternoon at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com

Don’t just take my word for it. In the fourth quarter, game on the line, as Hendrickson was having his way with Suamataia, Reid yanked him in favor of second-year player Wanya Morris.

A fourth-quarter benching.

“Sometimes,” Reid explained, “you have to take a step back to take a step forward.”

Well, we’ve now seen the former.

To a person — Reid, Mahomes, Travis Kelce — those in the organization spoke highly of Suamataia after the game. And, look, I’m on board that this will get better. There’s talent there, and after speaking to him and some teammates after the game, it’s quite clear there’s drive, too. Lots of reasons to expect better days in the future.

But I’m also on board with acknowledging the reality: It’s a problem in the present.

Fixable? Sure. Needs to be fixed? Absolutely.

This is protection for the blindside of Patrick Mahomes, after all, and as good as Mahomes is at sack avoidance, there is Super Bowl-level evidence that avoidance stretches only so far.

The offense looked inoperable late against an average Bengals defense— 16 plays for 50 yards in the final three drives — because Mahomes had so little time to operate it. That stemmed primarily from one matchup.

Let’s just fast-track to late in the third quarter. Hendrickson beat Suamataia with about a minute left, with the rookie called for holding, because that’s how referees term a clothesline. Two plays later, Suamataia completely abandoned his technique in favor of a bizarre attempt to chop Hendrickson — in the chest? — despite Mahomes making a deep drop.
Kansas City Chiefs offensive tackle Kingsley Suamataia during warm-ups before the Chiefs game vs. the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
Kansas City Chiefs offensive tackle Kingsley Suamataia during warm-ups before the Chiefs game vs. the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com

A sign of a rookie without answers.

Panic, even.

“Sometimes if you get beat a couple of different times, you haven’t quite figured out the answers to the test there on how to fix it,” Reid said.

It would grow worse. On the next offensive drive, Chiefs trailing in the fourth quarter, Suamataia got beat by Hendrickson’s inside move for a sack. A play later, Hendrickson returned outside and beat him for a hold that negated a 41-yard reception. On the next play, Suamataia was on the bench.

His day, over.

“It was a good reality check for me,” he said, before later adding of the two sacks, “It was just mental errors on my end. I just shot myself in the foot both times. …

“I just have to trust my technique, just like the coaches have been saying. Just stick to it. It’s worked every time that I have done it. I just have to stick to my technique and perfect it.”

To be fair, Suamataia didn’t have the easiest of matchups Sunday. Hendrickson is a three-time Pro Bowl player. He tends to make even veteran left tackles have some pretty miserable days.

But here’s who awaits on the Chiefs’ schedule: Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack, Nick Bosa, Maxx Crosby, then Crosby again, back to Joey Bosa and Mack, Myles Garrett, Danielle Hunter and T.J. Watt.

Among the 10 NFL leaders in pressures generated last year, seven will line up opposite Suamataia — and two of them will do so twice. It’s the player, not the ease of the assignment, that will have to alter the outcomes.

The Chiefs got by with Suamataia’s play for two-plus quarters Sunday — moved the ball just fine, actually — and that’s perhaps cause for some underlying optimism.

His struggles just seem to snowball, and that’s perhaps our best proof that what he termed “mental errors” — not a lack of ability — were the culprit. That lesson, sticking with that optimism, can be a good thing for the long haul.

It is also, however, proof of a developing rookie’s potential impact on a game.

And therefore proof of the importance of a question intertwined with the Chiefs’ future, even as they escaped the present:

What about the left tackle?